Nicola is Professor of Profound and Multiple Disabilities, Rix Inclusive Research, at the University of East London. She is also an Honorary Fellow, at the Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists, and trains in the sharing of stories, see https://storysharing.org.uk and training@pamis.org.uk.

Nicola has had a strong relationship with Israel and Palestine that she shares in the following terms.

“In the summer 1967, I went to Israel to stay on Kibbutz Kfar Giladi. I had been moved by the writings of Leon Uris, and had a very romantic view of kibbutz life as a kind of benign community socialism.

I lived with a family with impeccable credentials - the father was one of the first children born on the kibbutz, one of the oldest in Israel, founded in 1916. The mother was a South African anti-apartheid campaigner and not herself Jewish. I became really close to them and their 4 children.

My stay was in fact interrupted by the 1967 war, where I was certain Israel would be annihilated. In fact, it expanded. We young volunteers were taken on tours of the captured territory, and even now my eyes prick when I hear ‘Jerusalem of Gold’. This was when I had the first stirrings of doubt.

Riding in a truck, for all the world like Roman conquerors, we swept past silent Palestinians seated by the road, their gaze unfathomable. A young reservist accompanied me to a mountain in the Dead Sea. We looked out over the desert. ‘Look at this,’ he said. ‘The Arabs did nothing with it. We have made the desert bloom’.

My boyfriend had fought, of course. One of his company had been found crucified on the gates of Kuneitra. He showed me a photograph of his group surrounding the man they believed responsible, taken just before they set fire to him. I went to Kuneitra. The road was strewn with abandoned possessions. I realised Israel was not the country I had thought it was. Since then, I have become committed to activism for Palestine.

I have been a Quaker since the late 1970s. I also work with people who have learning disabilities, specialising in nonverbal communication, storytelling, and cultural access”.